Coming soon to a flight near you!

Check your inboxes! An email was sent out today to all Windows Insiders from Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group, to talk about what’s coming for Insiders in upcoming flights.

First off – we will be bringing the feature Timeline to Insiders with the next flight. We demoed Timeline earlier this year at Build and it has been hotly anticipated by Insiders. Timeline is integrated directly into Task View and allows you to jump back in time to easily find the files, apps, and websites you’re looking for as if you never left. We’re really looking forward to hearing what Insiders think as they start using Timeline.

Timeline as shown at Build 2017

Second – we’re going to start doing controlled studies with some of new features for Windows 10 we’re working on. We’ve been doing this on a smaller scale – like trying out different Hub icons in Microsoft Edge to see which one people like more. Now we’re going to start doing these with entire features. This means that a smaller percentage of you will initially get certain new features in builds and others may not get these new features for a while, as we compare the usage and satisfaction of these features versus people who don’t. Eventually everyone will get these features—but it just could be awhile. With this approach, it also means that we will make these features broadly available when they are ready, not necessarily tied to the next major feature update of Windows 10.

In the coming weeks, one of the first features to take this new approach will be a feature we’re calling “Sets” (we may end up calling it something else by the time it ships).

We will of course continue to ship a ton of new features and updates to the entire Windows Insider community as we build the future of Windows.

We want to make sure you are aware that we recently re-launched our website and have shifted our focus to provide content that YOU have asked for, namely Insider Corner (showcase on the Community) and Articles (information about the program that you have been asking for such as Made By You articles, Behind-The-Scenes and more). You will continue to see new content being published to the website every month including your highly requested piece on “How to convince your boss to upgrade your business to Windows 10”!

As you know, we on the Insider team are deeply passionate about creating technology but also creating WITH technology. We believe that everyone in the world should have the opportunity to at least be exposed to Computer Science education. We believe that ANYONE can learn and it is NEVER too late. If you have not attempted any sort of coding, we invite you to join us for Computer Science Education week next week as we together as a team complete the Minecraft: Hero’s Journey one hour game. We will then go into classrooms and teach this course within our own communities like this Windows Insider has done, not just for kids but the adults who love them. If you do complete this Hour of Code game (seeing that 5 year old’s can do this easily, we know you can too!), please do tweet us a screenshot of your completed certificate and we will share a mural of them in an upcoming website post!

For those of you who want to go further, I HIGHLY recommend this C# course on Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Over the next few months, you will see us create content and host events not only for our Insiders who are consumers and IT folks, but also Insiders who are developers and creators. This will include people who build UWP apps, but ALSO people who build anything using Windows: game developers, Mixed Reality artists, sound engineers, graphic designers, Azure-backed web apps, etc. If you’ve ever been even a little “code curious”, this is the time to learn!

In addition to Microsoft Virtual Academy, we have fallen in love with the amazing, diverse learning content on LinkedIn Learning. We highly recommend that over the holiday, Insiders use the one-month free trial and take a course that interests them. I personally am taking this negotiation course to continue to refine my hustle!

Lastly, if you want to engage with us around any kind of professional or career development, please follow me on LinkedIn where I share content daily. Note: that is NOT the channel to discuss or get information about Windows features.